{"id":600,"date":"2007-02-14T19:57:20","date_gmt":"2007-02-14T08:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/2007\/02\/14\/australia-vs-finland-vol-1"},"modified":"2007-10-20T23:38:37","modified_gmt":"2007-10-20T20:38:37","slug":"australia-vs-finland-vol-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/2007\/02\/14\/australia-vs-finland-vol-1","title":{"rendered":"Australia vs. Finland (vol. 1?)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve noticed some things that are different in Australia &#8212; besides the obvious of course. It could very well be that I&#8217;ve been hanging with the &#8220;wrong crowd&#8221; to do generalisations on the Aussies, so if that&#8217;s the case I apologise.<\/p>\n<p>I just came back from the local store because I bought some food for the next few days and on my way there I had to cross some roads. I stopped at the zebra crossing to wait for a car to pass but instead it stopped! Now, in Finland they don&#8217;t do that very often. Then at the cashier they put the groceries in the bag automatically! Of course, I&#8217;ve only been to this one shop but in Finland I&#8217;ve <em>never<\/em> been to a grocery store that bagged the food. There is a &#8220;fancy&#8221; store in the centre of Helsinki where at rush hours they have grocery baggers but that&#8217;s the only occasion I&#8217;ve seen the sort of customer service. Of course, other kind of stores put the purchases in plastic bags if you&#8217;re not fast enough to stop them.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s an Australian thing but they seem to like their food salted and seasoned. On the plane I had some salad with cucumber, lettuce, tomatoes, the normal stuff &#8212; it was &#8220;pickled&#8221;. It had some sort of vinegary taste in it and I couldn&#8217;t eat much (I picked out the tomatoes and ate them but left the rest). Also, the butter was salted (mentioned especially on the pack). In a conversation one of my friend&#8217;s friends mentioned that she doesn&#8217;t like plain salad, there has to be salt and things in it. I know fancy chefs (like Jamie Oliver <img src=\"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-includes\/images\/smilies\/icon_smile.gif\" alt=\":-)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/> ) always put salt and pepper in the salad but I don&#8217;t like it. To me, vegetables have to be fresh and unseasoned or cooked and seasoned.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m most amazed by how polite &#8212; in a talkative way &#8212; people are here. It struck me as a little silly at first to hear &#8216;sorry&#8217; and &#8216;excuse me&#8217; all the time in a crowded store, but that&#8217;s always better than to have bruises on your sides (or face and shoulders, for people my height) from getting hit by elbows&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve noticed some things that are different in Australia &#8212; besides the obvious of course. It could very well be that I&#8217;ve been hanging with the &#8220;wrong crowd&#8221; to do generalisations on the Aussies, so if that&#8217;s the case I apologise. I just came back from the local store because I bought some food for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tourist-of-oz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.all-things-me.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}